1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cigarette filter containing an extract of Vernonia Cinerea (L.) Less and a cigarette attached with the cigarette filter.
2. Description of the Related Art
A great number of smokers desire to give up smoking. Major reasons for this desire include: (1) tobacco is generally known to be harmful to health and, particularly, known to have carcinogenicity causing lung cancer and like cancers; (2) smoke (secondhand smoke) or smell of tobacco makes people around the smoker unpleasant, and what is more, it is said to be carcinogenic to such people.
Many such smokers desiring to give up smoking have taken some action to give up smoking more than once. However, there is a less number of smokers who have successfully given up smoking in spite of considerable intention and effort to give up their favorite in the life habit. Some of those who are unsuccessful in giving up smoking lose confidence or become or revert to heavy smokers far from reducing the number of cigarettes smoked. For this reason, smokers buy cigarettes including the phrase xe2x80x9cmildxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9clightxe2x80x9d against their will and keep on smoking while justifying their smoking claiming that such cigarettes contain reduced amount of nicotine or tar. Though there are some smokers who try to give up smoking by the use of nicotine-containing chewing gum or chewing tobacco, it does not mean that they are relieved from addiction to nicotine and, hence, they are likely to resume smoking at any time. Further, such smokers experience such frustration as derived from xe2x80x9cinhibition to light a cigarettexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cdeprivation of the pleasure of smoking due to giving up smokingxe2x80x9d, or the like during the stop smoking period, and, hence, feel additional stresses. This is because problems related to smoking include not only nicotinism. Any one of smokers, whether or not they desire to give up smoking, may unintentionally (a) want to put his or her finger about his or her mouth; (b) want to bring something into contact with his or her lips; (c) want to light a cigarette; (d) want to take breath and enjoy smoking while appreciating smoke; and after all, (e) yield to nicotinism. Smokers protect themselves from stresses by following these steps (a) to (e).
On the other hand, there are a number of smokers who are particular to their own tastes and are sensitive to scents and tastes of cigarettes of different brands. Herb-mixed cigarette imitations or cigarettes flavored with the scent of a fruit or the like for helping smokers"" suppressing smoking or giving up smoking, which are called xe2x80x9chealth-oriented cigarettesxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9ccigarettes for controlling smokingxe2x80x9d, do not meet the taste of such a smoker and hence the smoker may feel such products xe2x80x9cnot tastyxe2x80x9d. For this reason, it is a reality that such a smoker resumes smoking his or her favorite cigarette eventually.
Alternatively, there are some smokers who positively enjoy smoking and intentionally avoid giving up smoking notwithstanding the aforementioned facts (1) and (2). For this reason, tobacco companies may try to improve the scent and taste of cigarettes, but may never try to produce and sell products with degraded scent and taste for supporting smokers"" giving up smoking.
Accordingly, it has been earnestly desired that a novel cigarette filter and a cigarette be provided which enable smokers to suppress smoking or give up smoking for health to realize their desire efficiently with no stress exerted thereto without the likelihood that nonsmokers feel smoke or scent of the cigarette unpleasant. Heretofore, however, almost absolutely no study has been made from such a point of view.
The present invention has been made in view of the foregoing circumstances. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a novel cigarette filter which is capable of providing a desired effect of facilitating smokers"" suppressing smoking or giving up smoking while sufficiently satisfying the desire of such smokers to smoke and meeting their smoking habit without changing the cigarette""s own flavor thereby allowing the smokers to readily reduce the number of cigarettes smoked without the necessity of interrupting smoking, and a novel cigarette provided with such a filter.
According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a cigarette filter containing an extract of Vernonia Cinerea (L.) Less.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is also provided a cigarette comprising the cigarette filter as recited above.
The present invention will now be described in detail.
In order to provide a cigarette for allowing smokers to suppress smoking or give up smoking which satisfies all the aforementioned conditions, the inventors of the present invention have made research for and study of various substances which may allow smokers to suppress smoking or give up smoking in order to develop a cigarette filter containing some substance which facilitates smokers"" suppressing smoking or giving up smoking thereby to provide an effect of allowing such smokers to suppress smoking or give up smoking without degrading the scent or taste of a cigarette so that the cigarette satisfies the taste of any smoker, whether he or she desires to give up smoking or not. The inventors have discovered the fact that among such substances, an extract of Vernonia Cinerea (L.) Less, in particular, satisfies the foregoing conditions, and have made further study thereof. As a result, they have reached a discovery that the use of a cigarette filter containing the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract can provide desired effects, and have completed the present invention.
Vernonia Cinerea (L.) Less is one of native Thai herbs, belongs to the chrysanthemum family, and is called xe2x80x9clittle ironweedxe2x80x9d. Heretofore, Vernonia Cinerea Less has been utilized as a food or drink by being wholly boiled with hot water for eating or by being wholly dried to prepare a tea (Vernonia Cinerea Less tea) for drinking. Vernonia Cinerea Less has also been utilized for medical purposes because it is expected to be efficacious in treating skin injuries of diabetics, in lowering a blood sugar value, or in like medical treatments.
Further, the Vernonia Cinerea Less tea is known to exhibit an action of facilitating smokers"" giving up smoking. For example, it has been reported that more than about 80% of smokers who had drunk one to three cups of Vernonia Cinerea Less tea a day for about two to threeconsecutive weeks could reduce the number of cigarettes smoked to about a half, and could be relieved of nerve-racking state.
In such a case, however, a smoker has to drink the Vernonia Cinerea Less tea separately from smoking. Since each person has his or her own taste concerning drinks such as coffee and tea, smokers, if forced to take another kind of drink (Vernonia Cinerea Less tea) in addition to such drinks for the purpose of only giving up smoking, become subject to another stress. Particularly, smokers often enjoy smoking together with a drink and, in such a case the Vernonia Cinerea Less tea does not necessarily meet the taste of such smokers. Further, the stress becomes more considerably heavy because such smokers may take actions full of contradiction: that is, enjoying smoking at the same time with drinking of the Vernonia Cinerea Less tea for giving up smoking.
In view of the above, the inventors of the present invention changed the way of thinking and conceived the idea of applying Vernonia Cinerea Less to a cigarette instead of drinking Vernonia Cinerea Less as a tea. They thought that the application of Vernonia Cinerea Less to a cigarette would not force smokers to drink tea prepared for a specific purpose and hence would provide a desired effect of allowing smokers to suppress smoking or give up smoking readily while enjoying smoking as usual (that is, without any change of their life habit). Heretofore, such a change in the way of thinking has not been known at all and, moreover, it has been far from being predictable that the application of Vernonia Cinerea Less to a cigarette can completely fulfill the object of the present invention as will be described later.
More specifically, though the Vernonia Cinerea Less tea has recently been recognized to have the effect of facilitating smokers"" giving up smoking, the inventors of the present invention found the use of Vernonia Cinerea Less as a tea inappropriate as means for facilitating smokers"" giving up smoking and hence unacceptable to the public for the following reasons. As stated several times previously, smokers are particular about the scent and taste of cigarettes. Smokers have their own preference for the taste of coffee or tea to drink together with smoking, and their preferred taste may never be the taste of the Vernonia Cinerea Less tea. Moreover, many people will not dare to buy any other tea than the tea of their daily use or to brew Vernonia Cinerea Less for extraction. Accordingly, it is difficult for such smokers to go so far as to change their daily life style in order to keep on drinking the Vernonia Cinerea Less tea.
The present invention has been made from the viewpoints stated above and provides a breakthrough capable of overcoming the aforementioned problems. Technical features of the present invention reside in the discoveries that: Vernonia Cinerea Less, which had so far not been applied to a cigarette and only had been used as a tea to drink, was applied to a cigarette filter with the result that substantially the same effect of facilitating smokers""suppresing smoking or giving up smoking as the effect resulted from the case where smokers kept on drinking the Vernonia Cinerea Less tea every day according to an instruction; and a cigarette according to the present invention does not lose its scent and degrade its flavor unlike a conventional flavoring agent and exhibited such effects as an improvement in the halitosis of a smoker, which cannot possibly be provided by any conventional cigarette proposed for facilitating smokers suppressing smoking or giving up smoking.
The reason why Vernonia Cinerea Less is added to a cigarette filter according to the present invention is that an experiment in which Vernonia Cinerea Less was mixed with tobacco provided no desired effect. Specifically, according to a smoking experiment with use of tobacco mixed with Vernonia Cinerea Less, all the testees (10 of 10 testees) judged such tobacco xe2x80x9cnot tastyxe2x80x9d due to a change in tobacco""s own flavor, and there was no effect of facilitating smokers"" giving up smoking(10 of 10 testees showed no desire of stopping smoking). For this reason, any urinary cotinine determination was not conducted. The present invention has been made based on such fundamental experiments. Taking all the results of a series of such experiments into consideration, the inventors found that the constitution that Vernonia Cinerea Less is added to a cigarette filter was most useful and hence specified this constitution.
What smokers who cannot give up smoking in spite of their desire to give up smoking can make easily every day without any specific effort is to keep on smoking cigarettes of the same flavor as the cigarette they have been smoking as ever. Compulsory new efforts other than the effort stated above impose a heavy mental stress on such smokers and hence result in a failure in most cases. This is the weakness of human beings. The inventors of the present invention believe that the present invention provides a stress-free cigarette for the smokers who cannot give up smoking in spite of their desire to give up smoking.
Hitherto, there have been provided cigarettes with a catch phrase that the cigarettes allow smokers to suppress smoking, eventually give up smoking while meeting the smokers"" smoking habit and desire for smoking. For example, there has been proposed a cigarette with a filter containing a flavoring agent expected to deter smokers from being motivated to smoke or to suppress desire for smoking (hereinafter, such a filter will be sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9csmoking-suppressive filterxe2x80x9d) as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Gazette No. SHO 60-23781 for example.
Such smoking-suppressive filters so far proposed have been produced based on an idea to urge smokers to suppress smoking or give up smoking eventually while allowing the smokers to keep on enjoying smoking. However, the inclusion of an odd flavoring agent or the like impairs the cigarette""s own flavor and, hence, the pleasure of smoking itself is deprived of the smoker. In fact, smokers who had begun using such a filter with an intention to give up smoking gave up using such smoking-suppressive filter and eventually resumed smoking a cigarette with a generally available filter as ever in order to secure the pleasure of smoking, which has been deprived of during the period of using such a smoking-suppressive filter. Thus, such smoking-suppressive filters involve a problem that their purpose of suppressing smoking cannot be attained eventually.
In contrast, an inventive cigarette filter containing an extract of Vernonia Cinerea Less according to an embodiment of the present invention is a surprising breakthrough filter because it can provide a desired effect in facilitating smokers"" suppressing smoking or giving up smoking without impairing the cigarette""s own flavor while allowing the smokers to continue their smoking style as usual.
Such a Vernonia Cinerea Less extract is prepared by the following method.
In brief, the preparation method includes a hot water extraction process using water as a major extraction solvent and the whole body of Vernonia Cinerea Less.
Vernonia Cinerea Less is a native Thai herb as described earlier, but its cultivation region is not necessarily limited to Thailand. It is possible to use Vernonia Cinerea Less grown in a subtropical region that is similar to Thailand in environmental conditions for cultivation such as weather and climate (Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, India, or the like). Also, Vernonia Cinerea Less grown by a typical growing method can be used without any particular limitation on cultivation conditions and the like. As well, it is possible to use a variant, F1 hybrid, gene manipulated variant and cultivar of Vernonia Cinerea Less.
Although it is recommended that the whole body of Vernonia Cinerea Less be used, a part of the body such as leaf, stem or flower may be used. It is also recommended that Vernonia Cinerea Less be cut to an appropriate size and optionally dried before use for easy extraction.
The extraction solvent may be any such solvent comprising water as a major component. Though extraction with water only is possible, extraction may be performed using water containing at least one organic solvent (for example, a typical organic solvent free from exerting an adverse affect on reaction such as lower alcohols, e.g. methanol or ethanol, or acetones) in such a small amount as far as such an organic solvent does not adversely affect the effects provided by the present invention.
It is recommended that the extraction concentration of Vernonia Cinerea Less be adjusted to fall within a range between 1 g and 15 g of Vernonia Cinerea Less per 100 mL of the extraction solvent, preferably not less than 3 g (more preferably not less than 6 g) and not more than 12 g of Vernonia Cinerea Less per 100 mL of the extraction solvent. This extraction concentration is adjusted to a value higher than the concentration of a typical Vernonia Cinerea Less tea (1.5 g Vernonia Cinerea Less/150 mL water). This is because the extraction concentration thus adjusted will provide an extract capable of exhibiting desired effects.
Though the extraction time varies depending upon the amounts of the solvent used and Vernonia Cinerea Less, it is generally recommended that extraction be performed for a time period from the beginning of boiling of 100 mL of the extraction solvent in which Vernonia Cinerea Less has been put until the total amount is reduced to about xc2xd (about 30 to about 40 minutes). Thus, an extract adequate to exhibit desired effects can be obtained.
In extraction, it is possible to employ a process including: boiling the extraction solvent first; and then putting Vernonia Cinerea Less thereinto, or a process including: putting Vernonia Cinerea Less into the extraction solvent; and then boiling the extraction solvent. The former process was confirmed to provide an extract exhibiting a superior effect through experiments.
Vernonia Cinerea Less is thus subjected to hot-water extraction, and then the resulting extract is left to room temperature after optional filtration to give a desired Vernonia Cinerea Less extract. It should be noted that a cold-water extraction process, high-pressure extraction process or a like process may be employed.
The Vernonia Cinerea Less extract obtained by the aforementioned method is added to a filter by the following method. In order for the inventive cigarette filter according to the embodiment of the present invention to exhibit desired effects, the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract needs to wet out the entire cross section of the filter. It is therefore recommended that the amount of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract to be added to one filter is adjusted to a value from about 0.05 to about 0.5 mL, preferably from about 0.1 to 0.2 mL so that the cross section of the filter becomes entirely wetted out with the extract, though the amount of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract may vary depending upon the size, material or the like of the filter to be used.
The inventive filter containing the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract according to the embodiment of the present invention may be applied to a commercially available filter-tip cigarette or a cigarette filter or used under instructions from a doctor or the like for individual patients. In the latter case, it is recommended that the dry content concentration of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract and/or the amount of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract to be added to a filter be adjusted appropriately in view of the conditions of each smoker (the kind of a cigarette to be used, smoking amount, smoking experience, age, sex, condition of health, degree of a desire to give up smoking, and the like) and the like, because the effect of facilitating smokers"" suppressing smoking or giving up smoking is enhanced and, a desired effect can be obtained in a short period by increasing the dry content concentration of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract and/or the amount of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract to be added to a filter. Of course, it is possible to increase or decrease the dry content concentration of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract and/or the amount of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract to be added to a filter depending upon the development after smoking. Specifically, it is recommended that the number of cigarettes smoked/the quantity of urinary cotinine be checked periodically and that the amount of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract to be used be increased if a desired effect of facilitating smoker""s suppressing smoking or giving up smoking is unobtainable in an appropriate period. Thus, the present invention has an advantage that a most suitable smoking control schedule for obtaining desired effects can be easily designed or modified in accordance with the condition of a smoker at an appropriate occasion. It is to be noted that urinary cotinine is a metabolic product of nicotine and that the quantity of urinary cotinine was substantiated as one of scientific/medical nicotine intake parameters.
In the case where the cigarette filter according to the embodiment of the present invention is used for general smokers, the cigarette filter may be prepared as a filter product having several grades determined taking the former case into consideration or as a filter product containing a mean effective amount of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract at manufacturer""s discretion. It is obvious from the results of the experiment to be described later that the cigarette filter according to the embodiment of the present invention exhibits a desired effect of facilitating smoker""s suppressing smoking or giving up smoking for smokers having a strong desire to suppress smoking or give up smoking thereby decreasing urinary cotinine to make each smoker more healthy. For smokers having no desire to suppress smoking or give up smoking, on the other hand, the cigarette filter according to the embodiment of the present invention allows such smokers to keep on smoking at the same level as ever without evoking desire to suppress smoking or give up smoking from the smokers because it does not change the scent and taste of a cigarette. Thus, the cigarette filter according to the embodiment of the present invention is applicable to commercially-available cigarettes in general irrespective of whether or not or to what extent smokers desire to suppress smoking or give up smoking and is very useful as it does not deprive the pleasure of smoking of the smokers. There is no particular limitation on the shape of a filter used in the present invention, and the present invention is applicable to the filters of generally available filter-tipped cigarettes and filters prepared for exclusive use with cigarettes.
The present invention is capable of exhibiting a superior effect of facilitating smokers"" suppressing smoking or giving up smoking for smokers having an intention to give up smoking. Specifically, the present invention is very useful because it allows smokers who want smoking by lighting a cigarette to break away with their mental addiction while meeting their desire for smoking and their smoking habit without changing the cigarette""s own flavor and because it provides desired effects without giving any stress to the smokers. Particularly, as will be described in Example, it was proved that smokers who smoked an inventive cigarette according to the embodiment of the present invention could get rid of the xe2x80x9cbad smell inherent to smokingxe2x80x9d. As compared particularly with the aforementioned flavoring-agent-containing cigarette which is actually hated by nonsmokers because of the bad smell inherent thereto, the present invention is capable of resolving all such problems and hence is very useful.
Although it is unclear in terms of strictness why the addition of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract to an inventive filter according to the embodiment of the present invention provides such an excellent effect of facilitating smokers"" suppressing smoking or giving up smoking, it is conceivable that since the components of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract are directly absorbed by the nosal mucosa and lungs of a smoker together with cigarette smoke without decomposition at the stomach or intestine of the smoker which occurs if they are drunk, such direct absorption requires a much smaller amount of the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract to allow a remarkably superior effect to result than required in the case where the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract is used for drink. Further, it is conceivable that such a superior effect results from the Vernonia Cinerea Less extract aspirated many times a day unlike the case of the Vernonia Cinerea Less tea drunk a few times a day. Various effects of the present invention proved in Example to be described later may be un-explicable effects that may not be elucidated by the present level of science and technology. Further, the inventors of the present invention consider that the present invention becomes applicable not only for use in facilitating smoker""s suppressing smoking or giving up smoking but also to treatments for patients mentally addicted to narcotics such as marijuana, alcoholics and the like in the future.